Gray
by CatsOnMars
Summary: The love story of Spike and Julia reinvented, written in Spikes point of view. This is my first Bebop fic so please be kind and R&R.
1. Default Chapter

Author`s Note: As said in the summary, this is about Spike and Julia`s past, only with some things changed about the general story. It`s a love story. That simple. With this fic I wanted to show the story of Spike from a new kind of perspective (after all I have seen very few fanfics written in his point of view that take place in the past) and just show a different side of his character in general without making it seem like a completely different person. I also wanted this story to work kind of like a tragedy, because everybody knows how the it ends anyway, but I hoped to make the reader still not want it to have a sad ending. Whether I succeeded in doing this, I`ll only know if you kindly R&R. As this is my first fanfic for anything in a long time, I apoligize for the things it`s lacking. The hardest parts for me to write were the interactions between Spike and Vicious, and I think one those scenes turned out a little fuzzy.  
  
Disclaimer: The beginning of this story uses a made-up concept of Mars having artificial sunsets. This is not my idea; a fanfiction called "Wind and Sea in A Minor" by Melissa that is hosted at asteroidblues.com explains Mars as having an artificial sun. Just thought I should add some kind of disclaimer, because I just had to use that idea for some reason. Everything else is original, though.  
  
The way I recall the events now, everything was gray. In my memory of it all in my mind, it was all gray. Gray but for the flushing red of soft roses burning my hard heart and the glowing ends of cigarettes that I shared with her in the dark, smoky nights with soft jazz music in the distance.  
  
Julia. The times that I knew her were the best times and the worst times of my life. And the shortest, it seems to me now. She came from nowhere, from some unreachable heaven into this hell we live in and left as quickly as she`d come, leaving footprints that were like painful glass to walk on afterwards.  
  
She was beautiful to me. Which is saying a lot. You see, I grew up on Mars, the planet of rugged desert and beautiful sunsets. But the sunsets, no matter how genuine they looked, were artificial. Created by man and not by nature, defining the worthlessness of the future we`ve come to, breathtaking in the most disturbing way. So the only beauty I ever knew was unnatural, created, decieving.  
  
But Julia. She was beautiful in all ways one can be beautiful, like a fragile white flower with petals so thin that light shines right through it, until you can`t tell the difference between beautiful inside and beautiful outside.  
  
I remember her eyes were the color of a sea, a pure and undisturbed blue you can see only when looking at an ocean from space. Except for when she was sad and distant, or when her eyes welled up with tears and she was trying not to cry. Then her eyes became a strange shade of gray.  
  
When I met Julia she was involved with my friend and partner in crime, Vicious. An urban flower with goddess-like eyes and secrets hidden in her black boots, she was one of us. And yet in a way, she wasn`t. Beneath the tangible exterior, I always somehow knew that she was good. That she didn`t quite belong here with us. This simple understanding became the thread of unspoken friendship between us. Whenever we saw eachother in other places than with Vicious, we would always smile or say hello.  
  
But I never actually talked to Julia for real until one night that we met by coincidence in a retreated part of the city.  
  
There was a stone bridge over water that was one of the oldest things in town, and also the most quiet place to be there. I would go there a lot at night and listen to the music of the city that sounded so quiet and calm from there, as if it was a place too sacred and hidden to be consumed with loud noises.  
  
One night I was standing out there with my arms crossed on one side of the bridge, staring down into the water that looked murky and dark and carried no reflection. Light was another thing besides sound that didn`t seem to quite make it to this area from the surroundings; the only illuminating light, it seemed, was that from the end of my cigarette.  
  
I heard soft footsteps from my left. When I looked up I saw Julia by herself coming up onto the bridge. We met glances - or at least I thought so, but it was hard to tell in the dark - and then she turned to the same side of the bridge I was at and leaned against it, digging through her trench coat pocket for a cigarette. She put it in her mouth and then struck a match over and over, unable to get a flame. I watched as she kept trying, obviously frustrated, and then she looked up in surprise when I flicked my lighter, walked over to her, and held it out to her offeringly. She stared at the lighter for a second and then leaned over until the tip of her cigarette was lit. Then we each went back to the bridge side, standing in the same position as before but just closer to eachother now, and went on to speak without making eye contact.  
  
"Thanks," she said. "It took me a second to realize that it was you."  
  
"I`ve never seen you out here before."  
  
"You come here often?" she asked.  
  
"Well, you know...It`s one of the better parts of the city."  
  
"You mean one of the less urban," she said.  
  
I laughed and then we were both quiet for a while, smoking in silence. Because of her almost unnoticeable edginess I assumed she was troubled by something, and because she wasn`t with Vicious now I guessed it had something to do with him. But I decided it was better not to say anything, even if it would look like I didn`t care. Did I care? Something told me I shouldn`t, but...  
  
I threw my cigarette over the bridge into the water and turned around. "Can I ask you something?"  
  
"What?" she asked, smiling like she had no idea what I could possibly want to know.  
  
"What are you doing here?"  
  
"Same thing you are. Getting some fresh air."  
  
"No, I meant..." I nearly hesitated. "Well, what`s somebody like you doing hanging around here? With people like me and Vicious?"  
  
"Maybe I`m not as good as you take me for," she said with a shrug.  
  
"I find that unlikely," I assured. "I`ve seen all the kinds of bad. Believe me, you are none of them."  
  
"Well, then maybe you`re just not as bad-ass as you think you are."  
  
We both laughed, and then looking at her I actually thought she felt a little better now than before. Her pale blond hair fluttered back in the gentle breeze like the wings of a trembling white moth. She hummed along to some soft piano music sounding from a club far away.  
  
"You go there much?" I asked.  
  
"What?"  
  
"The clubs."  
  
"Oh," she said, looking to her left. "No, not if Vicious doesn`t go. You know, unless I`m really worried about being alone for too long. Usually people won`t leave me alone in places like that. Sometimes I just want to not talk. Be by myself, you know." She caught herself. "Oh, but I don`t mean you, Spike Spiegel. I`m glad you found me here." She threw her cigarette into the water to join mine in the watery grave, making everything dark again. Then she said to me, "Until next time," and walked away. It was so dark then that I even lit another cigarette, but one couldn`t give off the light of two.  
  
After that I saw her almost every time I went to the bridge. Every time I could sense that she was there to get away from Vicious and that something was wrong. She started to smell less like his dark, contained quarters and started to smile and laugh more like a person than just someone else`s person. In public she didn`t let Vicious touch her, if he had ever touched her in public before. I knew that things were coming to an end for her, as much as I didn`t dare to say anything of it, and even feared what other thing could soon begin.  
  
I thought, if Vicious knew that she dissapeared at the late hours of the night just to come and talk to me, that would be the end of it. But I got a feeling that she found some kind of comfort in talking to me, even if we never mentioned Vicious, so I contently kept her company without a second thought.  
  
One night she seemed almost perfectly happy, and I wondered if things had actually reversed and gotten better for her.  
  
"So this is pretty much your home?" I asked her.  
  
"Well, yeah," she said. "At the moment, at least. I haven`t really belonged anywhere since I was a little girl, and now it seems kind of sacrilegious to make anywhere my real home."  
  
"Yes, I can definitely identify with that."  
  
We both had our arms crossed on the stone bridge side, and after a moment of calm silence she looked down at mine. "Got any brothers on Earth, Spike?"  
  
"Earth?" I asked. "No one with half my blood would be caught dead living there."  
  
"Hm. You have beautiful hands. I`ve seen a pair like yours only once before. A piano player from New York."  
  
"And I presume this piano player was some lover of yours?"  
  
"Lover? Oh no. He played at this bar on week nights. He would hum along to his music and had this really low, smoky voice. I never heard him speak a word, though."  
  
"You must have worried about being alone a lot to go to bars that much on Earth," I assumed.  
  
She smiled. "Do have to figure out everything about me?"  
  
"Do you always notice people`s hands first or something?"  
  
"Well. My mother used to say something, I remember. 'A man with good hands does no harm'."  
  
"Nothing against your mother, but these hands have done plenty of damage," I said, only to feel like I`d offended even more after what she said next.  
  
She laughed. "I never really believed the whole thing myself. I guess it`s funny what we do to remember people who die." She stopped talking for a moment, contemplating. Then she asked me, "So have you ever had a lover yourself, Spike?"  
  
"Me? Oh, I`ve had my share of women, you know. The kind from clubs and city streets."  
  
"They have no souls, you know."  
  
"I know." I looked into the water thoughtfully. "But I`ve never been in love. You know, not the real thing."  
  
She put her cigarette to her mouth deviously and turned her head towards me. "Me neither."  
  
And then one day, she wasn`t at the bridge. For the first time in so long that it felt hauntingly unnatural when I waited for what seemed like eternity and remained the only one there.  
  
That was when it started to come to me. Her absence was like a swallowing darkness, as strange as that was. And I realized it then. I cared for her. Somehow. Maybe I even wanted her. I was too confused to know anything for sure. But whatever I felt for her, I felt it in such a way that suddenly Vicious meant nothing to me. I didn`t care that we`d been partners for years. She deserved better than him.  
  
The dangerous idea that I had denounced my attachment to Vicious for a woman - some woman who should mean nothing to me - was so disturbing that it couldn`t be exorcised by staying put. So I found myself walking into a loud bar, just to find a crowd, something. I had to go somewhere where I wouldn`t be forced to think. Somewhere away from the bridge.  
  
When I went inside I didn`t spot anyone that I knew so I sat by myself at the bar. The bartender was a little occupied at the moment trying to convince some guy that he`d had enough to drink already. I sat waiting, careless and silent, and traced my finger along a scratch in the tabletop, when I saw a flame of blond out of the corner of my eye.  
  
I turned to my right and there was Julia, trying to bore some drunken buffoon into leaving her alone.  
  
"Come on, baby, how about it?"  
  
"Go away," she said calmly.  
  
"Oh, but we just-"  
  
"Listen, I told you. I`m not going anywhere with you. Please leave me alone."  
  
"Maybe I will if you do something for me, huh?"  
  
"Hey, you want to listen to the woman?" I said, approaching both of them from behind. I opened up my jacket just enough to him to be able to see my gun. "You don`t want to piss me off."  
  
He looked me up and down in surprise. "Hey, gimme some slack. I didn`t know she was taken."  
  
"Just beat it."  
  
"Hey, I`m goin."  
  
He walked off, mumbling to himself. Julia said, "Thanks," as I looked around to make sure no one else had spotted my gun. "Funny running into you here."  
  
"You shouldn`t be here by yourself, you know," I said, sitting down next to her at the bar. "Do you know how late it is?"  
  
I didn`t mean to treat her like some helpless damsel in distress, but I was probably trying to hide that it was the fact that she was here at all that worried me, not that she was here alone. She didn`t seem to mind, though. "Yeah, I know," she said. "But there was no one to come with, so arrest me."  
  
"What about Vicious?" I asked.  
  
"Oh, me and him are over. He was too proud to say anything, was he?"  
  
"Well, that`s Vicious for you." I was quiet for a moment, taking in what I`d just heard. "I`m...sorry things didn`t work out."  
  
She scoffed. "You should be happy for me, you know. I got out. Got out of it with him and..." She stopped, leaning her forehead into her hand. The way she looked so worn and exhausted worried me more than before. "God, I`m sorry. He`s your friend. I`ve been incredily stupid..."  
  
"No, don`t be sorry," I said. "I got mixed up with him too, and I`m not sorry."  
  
"Well, it`s kind of easier for you," she said. "You don`t have to sleep with him."  
  
I couldn`t help but laugh at that, and then she did too once she realized exactly what she had just said. It brought a less doleful mood and then we suddenly forgot the seriousness of anything that had happened that night.  
  
"So I guess I shouldn`t buy you a drink," I thought out loud.  
  
"Why not?" she asked.  
  
"Well, unless you want me to. I guess it couldn`t hurt. I mean, it`s not like I`m some horny drunken case trying to pick you up."  
  
She smiled, almost laughing again. "Well, allright."  
  
We ordered drinks but didn`t stay in the bar much longer anyway. Outside on the bridge we talked more quietly than usual, because it was now so late at night that everything was almost completely silent, so neither of us felt right breaking the serenity of it all. She was out of cigarettes so we shared my last one. It rained and we walked together, laughing and holding our trenchcoats over our heads. And then we found ourselves upstairs in my enclosed and unkept excuse for living quarters, now made pleasant just from her presence there. In my room there were stains on the wood floor, and ashtrays in four different places, and on the small table by the bed my gun lay tossed randomly next to an open pack of cigarettes. But with the window open and the intoxicatingly calm breeze coming in, it was our quiet retreat, our safe place.  
  
She practically fell into my arms. I don`t know if I could have stopped it from happening, had I been in my right mind, and thinking about those kinds of things is pointless, anyway. We cannot change the past, and even if we learn from it that doesn`t take away the pain. My fate was there waiting to claim me in the color of the night sky outside, and it doesn`t matter if it could have happened another way.  
  
I was sitting in a chair near the window and Julia was in the bathroom getting herself dry. I marveled at how it had stopped raining just as soon as we`d made it here. After a while she came out, standing in the doorway and looking at me. "What are you thinking about?" she asked.  
  
"I`m thinking I shouldn`t have bought you that drink," I said.  
  
"I`m not drunk."  
  
But she knew that wasn`t what I meant.  
  
Slowly she came over to me and reached for my cigarette. She took it from my mouth and put it in an ashtray on the table behind her. I sat perfectly still as she leaned over and kissed my temple right by my right eye. I hardly felt it because she just barely touched me, but at the same time it felt like a million things were happening to me on the inside. I closed my eyes and then it was my forehead, my cheek, under my jaw. She came closer, easing onto the chair so that her legs were on either side of me, and my arms moved slowly around her. She loosened my tie, leaning in to put her mouth to the hollow of my neck, and then I rubbed her back as she raked her fingers through my messy, untamed hair with her face buried into my shoulder. Then she lifted her head and drew it close to mine, and I held my breath. Then she pulled back at the last moment. "Hey." She stared thoughtfully. "...Your eyes are different colors."  
  
I couldn`t say anything in response. It was like I`d been injected with something to make me go to sleep. I could feel myself slipping away. I wanted her, needed her. There was nothing else anymore. I was not even myself anymore without her.  
  
We kissed, but it wasn`t like that. Not like a physical action. Just as I`ve smoked a thousand cigarettes and lit a thousand matches in my life, I`ve seen a thousand flames burst into firey life, illuminating all dark surroundings in an instant. That was what I felt in that moment, in that sacred embrace I held no right to. I felt my heart on fire after a lifetime of feeling nothing, and suddenly it was all I felt, all I knew, all I was.  
  
I was lost.  
  
I kissed her in the dark, held her until I thought the only air I could breathe any longer was that that she exhaled. Then after a while she became tense in my arms, and then she got up and said she had to go. I didn`t know how much time had gone by. If it was almost morning, or if it had only been an hour since we got here. But I knew why she was leaving. She was just as shocked to find herself here with me as I was surprised that she`d stayed here at all. Of course, these feelings of guilt weren`t going to last long.  
  
She picked up her jacket that was still damp from walking in the rain, and before leaving down the stairs she said to me, "Don`t let him find out."  
  
There was no question who "him" was. From then on Vicious was like that damn bird of prey always perched on his shoulder, watching us all the time. At least it seemed that way. Whenever his eyes were on me it was like he could see right through me, like he could see her in there. What was she doing inside of me? He would have drawn his sword and stabbed me in that place where she safely lay.  
  
But Julia always knew where she could find me, and it was too easy to find places we could be alone. Out of constant fear of him discovering us we both developed a habit of avoiding Vicious, and it came to the point where we saw almost no one but eachother every day.  
  
The first time we made love I thought I was going to die from it. Or something close to dying. She grinded me into a million pieces until I was helpless and nothing, felt like nothing. Each night we were together she killed me and I loved her more than I ever thought I could love anything, and that was how it was.  
  
On nights that we weren`t together I would sit on my windowsill smoking and listening to the music echoing into the streets from the lonely saxophones and longing singers in night clubs nearby. I would watch the blinking lights in the sky of ships taking off and the drunk wanderers that would walk by. I could only sit and wonder how it is that loneliness always takes form in the dead of night, that all solitary figures become visible only in silver moonlight.  
  
Mornings came like the arms of a mother, enveloping me and even convincing me with their beautiful faces that everything was allright. If Julia and I met in the afternoon we would walk places together, laughing and sometimes even holding hands in the bad parts of town where no one laughed and parents kept their children close, afraid of getting mugged. One time we both got tired of walking so we rode the bus around town, and Julia winked at a little boy who was staring at us. We went all the places where there would be no one who knew us, and it was strange, but a pleasant change from who we were.  
  
Sometimes when I woke before she did I would look at her sleeping peacefully, and it was in these moments that I really wondered what she was doing here. Lying perfectly still with her shining hair and smooth features, she looked like she`d been carved from ivory, fashioned to perfection. Sometimes I`d touch her and think that I saw a smile come onto her face. It was too perfect. She was an angel in this dirty, godforsaken world. My world. Why did she come to me at night? Here? Why did she even care about me? Was she a guardian? Some beautiful materialization of the forgiving eyes if God?  
  
Every moment with her was like ice cold fire. It was happiness with thorns on the edges. We knew our time together was stolen. And somehow, we knew we would pay for it. She was going to be the end of me. I felt it.  
  
One time I ran into Vicious and it surprised the hell out of me because I realized how long it had been since I last saw him. I was sitting at a cafe table outside reading a paper when I heard his dark, uncaring voice beside me. "Spike. My man. Haven`t seen much of you around lately."  
  
"Well, I haven`t been much of anywhere, to be honest," I answered casually, trying to act completely unsurprised by his sudden presence.  
  
"What`s the matter? Feeling a little under the weather?" he asked jokingly. "I`d say a game of pool is an order."  
  
"No, that`s allright," I said. "I was just going to stay in tonight."  
  
"That`s a rain check." He nudged my shoulder. "What have you done with Spike Spiegel, dammit?"  
  
I laughed and he just walked off, saying, "I`ll find you later, you moron."  
  
"Yeah, see you," I said.  
  
The encounter left me kind of disturbed for the rest of the day, and Julia noticed. When we were up in my room and she was staring out the window, she said after a long stretch of silence between us, "You`re starting to worry."  
  
I kicked the bed under me with my heel. "I ran into Vicious today."  
  
That made her head turn. I just stared down at the floor. "Where does he think you`ve been?" she asked.  
  
"Sitting on my ass around here all day."  
  
She kept looking at me and I kept avoiding eye contact. "Do you think he suspects anything?"  
  
I stood up and dug my hands in my pockets. I didn`t answer her question. I didn`t know how to answer. On one hand, there was no way the idea could have possibly gotten into Vicious`s head. But on the other, he was no kind of idiot. Vicious was known for being cunning and tricky, to an obnoxious extent if you`re not on his side.  
  
Julia wouldn`t let me be silent. "Don`t lie to me to make me feel better. He could do things to hurt us if he knew. He has power, and anger. And pride." I heard something thin and weak in her voice. Fear, I realized. "...Did he say something?"  
  
"No," I answered right away. "There`s nothing to be worried about."  
  
She shook her head and looked back out the window. "There always is."  
  
I had never really thought about it before. I guess I hadn`t wanted to. What could happen if Vicious really did find out. Julia would know even better than I the kind of man he was. That he was not a person to mess with, defy, or betray. One might as well throw himself into a pit of hungry lions. And now in so short a time, I had become a traitor to him. And in a way, to the Red Dragon itself.  
  
I guess I had always known that Vicious was evil. It had just never been a concern until now. Sure, me and him had had our share of memorable nights spent cracking up laughing and loving it when we got the best of eachother at a game of pool or poker. But in the long run, I didn`t depend on him for anything, and his affairs were none of my business. But now it made all the difference because I was no longer standing beside him. Now he was my enemy. He just didn`t know it yet.  
  
I don`t know how much time went by. Maybe a week passed, or maybe it was the very next morning, but some time after that I woke to a day that wasn`t going to be like any other. 


	2. chapter 2

Sunlight came into the room, gently easing my eyes open, and then I was staring up at the ceiling. She lay beside me with nothing covering her but the thin white sheet around her, like a slender insect inside the chrysalis that wouldn`t completely shed. She was still in a deep sleep, turned away from me with her hair blanketing the pillow. I got out of bed, threw on some lounge pants, and smoked a cigarette by the window, listening to her breathe. By the time I had put a shirt on and thrown a tie around my neck, she was starting to wake up.  
  
She stirred quietly and I lay next to her, leaned in and kissed her back in between her shoulder blades. It surprised her and she reached back, grabbing a hold of my tie, and pulled my head beside hers. She smiled and kissed me, and then rolled over to face me and laid on her side with her forehead against my chest. I put my arm over her, bringing her close, and stroked her back with one finger. As we lay like this everything in the world seemed to pause and go quiet, peaceful and unchanging. After a while she shivered and curled against me like a little girl, and I felt her breathing become even and relaxed, as if she was asleep again.  
  
I don`t know what it was about right then, in that room. But that moment felt so much larger than me. It was almost like I was being taken care of. Nothing bad was going to happen.  
  
Then I surprised myself by saying it, but not as much as I did by actually feeling it.  
  
"I love you, Julia."  
  
She was silent. For a second I thought I saw her eyes glimmer and become gray, but then she just rolled away and sat up and was quiet.  
  
"I want to get out of here," I told her. I was practically begging her. "Will you leave this place? Leave the Red Dragon? Will you come with me?"  
  
Her head hung sadly. "It`s not that simple, Spike. Maybe the rules are slightly different for me...But you can`t just leave. Once you`re in the Red Dragon, you stay in it. Everybody knows that."  
  
"But we could plan how to do it." She didn`t look convinced, so I went on. "I can do things like that. I planned for two months how to run away from my foster home and fly to Ganymede when I was just twelve years old. No one can keep me someplace I don`t want to be."  
  
"That`s different, Spike. Listen, if there was any way that I could just pack what I have and leave now, with you, I would do it." She looked over her shoulder at me. "I`d do it."  
  
I returned the same serious stare. "We can find a way."  
  
There was a change in her eyes. She was possibly starting to believe it, the more talked, but she wasn`t going to get her hopes up for anything that wasn`t going to happen.  
  
She lay back down and I got up from the bed, buttoning up my shirt that had been hanging open and sloppily knotting my tie. I looked out the window, getting a thought. Since she wasn`t looking my way for the next few minutes she was surprised when she saw that I`d changed my pants and put my jacket on. I said to her, "I`ll be back in an hour," and opened the door to leave. She said nothing but I knew she would stay there.  
  
I was going to see Vicious. I didn`t know why. Maybe I felt the need to clear up any suspicions he was getting. Or maybe it was just an old habit coming back to nag me. After all, not long ago it would have been perfectly natural for me to stop by his place during the day.  
  
As could always be expected, I was let in my a member of the syndicate and not by Vicious himself. This guy was about sixteen or seventeen; the age I was when I joined. It made me uneasy for some reason. I was led into the dim, windowless room where Vicious was tending to his swords in a self-contained fashion. He looked up and saw me. "Spike. How`s it going."  
  
"It goes," I answered casually.  
  
"Isn`t that always the way," he said, putting the sword he had away into his tall closet of glimmering weaponry. "So what have you been up to?" Before I could reply he added unseriously, "Or do I want to know?"  
  
I just laughed in response, hiding that it had actually been a perfectly unsettling thing for him to say.  
  
Vicious nodded in the direction of a table where there was a glass decanter of scotch. "Drink?"  
  
"Naw, it`s too early for that." Actually I had no idea what time it was. I was standing there cluelessly in the middle of the room with my hands in my pockets. But he seemed almost amused by the fact that I obviously didn`t know why I`d come here.  
  
"So. Spike," he said with a new tone of voice that somehow made me uncomfortable. "We`ve known eachother for quite some time, right?"  
  
"Something of a handful of years," I answered, not liking where he was going with this.  
  
"Hm. Never mind..."  
  
"What?" I asked. After all, on a normal day I would have asked.  
  
He looked down at the floor as he walked a few paces closer to me. "You see much of Julia?"  
  
I couldn`t hesitate so I said the first thing that came out. "Every once in a while."  
  
"And does she talk to you?"  
  
"Not enough for me to have anything to tell you," I said. Yes, that was a safe answer. "Nothing of interest to you, I mean."  
  
He shrugged. "Too bad. You know, you sound almost protective of her."  
  
"...Do I?"  
  
"Yes. There wouldn`t be something she doesn`t want me to know, would there?"  
  
"Of course not," I said. It was almost impossible to hide how I shuddered inside. His swords gleamed at me sharply from where they hung behind him. "I mean, I wouldn`t know. I just try to be friendly so I talk to her. Look, what`s eating you? I mean, besides the fact that you two maybe had kind of a bad break-up. Which I sincerely regret...But what is it you want to know?"  
  
He took in that outspill of brutal honesties and I wondered if I should have just kept my mouth shut. Then he just said, "Oh, it`s nothing. I was just wondering when she`s going to get everything straightened out. You know. And come back."  
  
He was smirking like I should be amused along with him. But I didn`t smile.  
  
"Is that how you think it is?" I asked.  
  
He frowned but at the same time looked unaffected. He turned to the side so that we were no longer facing eachother.  
  
"If you want some kind of advice from me, Vicious," I began. "I think you should just let it go. You`re not in control of this. You can be possessive of other things, but not of a woman. Not that woman. Not like this. Just let her go and leave her the hell alone."  
  
About two seconds passed that let me realize I`d made a big mistake. He stood silently and I could hear his anger in all the words he didn`t say. Then just like that he turned, swinging his fist at me before I could realize what was happening. Then I was on the floor and he was looking down at me with that smirk.  
  
"Careful, Spiegel. I`d think you would know better. You wouldn`t want to find yourself at the end of my sword."  
  
I wiped blood from my lip and said, giving him an angry glare, "Of course not, Vicious."  
  
"Pity," he said. "I thought we were something of friends, Spike Spiegel."  
  
"Yeah," I agreed. "Not much of a loss, is it?"  
  
"No, not really." He put his hands behind his back and turned away as I got back up on my feet. "What an embarassment. She`ll come back to me unchanged, and won`t you look like a fool then?"  
  
"Yeah. You`re probably right, Vicious." I said the words darkly, uncaring. Then I got out of there. I left his cave and went back out into the sunlight that couldn`t warm the overwhelming coldness now growing inside me.  
  
And I went back. Back to Julia, my woman now, as strange as that still felt and especially after seeing Vicious. She was still there when I went up the stairs and came into the room through the creaking door.  
  
She had just emerged from the shower but was no more dressed than before, sitting on the bed with my black bathrobe hugged around her hips and her bare back facing me staringly like a sad, grimacing face. She was hunched over slightly and the only movement, it seemed, was the smoke billowing softly from the tip of the cigarette at the end of her long, thin fingers. It was as if she knew already that something was wrong, that something had changed. She smoked that cigarette with all the crushed hope and silent dismay that I felt.  
  
She turned her head just enough to see my figure behind. "You talked to Vicious," she concluded right away.  
  
With my head down I took my jacket off and tossed it into a chair. "It`s over. Me and him...I`m finished with him."  
  
She put the cigarette to her mouth for a moment. Then she said, "He knows."  
  
The fact that she sensed it without even having seen him should have been a giveaway. But just to not frighten her, I answered, "No. He couldn`t."  
  
"He`ll find out."  
  
"It doesn`t matter if he does."  
  
I knew that she was afraid of Vicious, and that in a way she always had been, far before she ever got mixed up with me. His obsession with her and his jealousy were like chains around her binding her to him. They made her afraid of loving anyone else. I shuddered with contained anger. That was exactly how he wanted it to be.  
  
She pulled my robe up over her, threading her arms through the big sleeves, and just like that the grimacing face was shielded. She tied it around herself and stood up, staring off away from me. It was almost like she was talking to my shadow on the opposite wall.  
  
"This can`t last, Spike," she said quietly. "People like us aren`t given these kinds of lives. Not forever." She looked at me and her face was drained, tired, like her eyes were too weak to sustain any expression. "I want to be brave. But now, because of you, I can`t be." Her eyes flickered to the floor. "...I don`t want you to get hurt."  
  
We were both the same, I realized. Both prisoners of our feelings, locked inside tiny cages that were our own hearts.  
  
"I`m not going to get hurt."  
  
"Vicious is dangerous," she said gravely. "You know that just as much as I do. You`ve seen the things he`ll do. If he was after you, then I`d...dammit, I don`t know."  
  
"Come on. He`s only so much of a match for me."  
  
"Shut up," she snapped back. "Talking like that isn`t going to change anything. It doesn`t matter how strong you are if you`ve got the whole syndicate up against you. Don`t you see what could happen to us?"  
  
I was struck silent. For a moment there was no sound but cars outside, and she wiped her eyes defeatedly.  
  
It was so strange how just that morning she had been lying in my arms, and in that moment I`d truly believed that nothing could happen to us. That everything, eventually, would be fine. And now, only an hour later, a dark cloud had passed over us that seemed inconquerable, and I felt like an idiot for believing that it could last. How naive I had become ever since I started dreaming. Loving. Loving was making me soft, letting everything walk all over me and reduce me to something small and worthless.  
  
"This was never the fate I would have chosen, Julia," I told her, turning to stare out the window. "Before I met you I didn`t need anything. Just air to breathe and a pack of cigarettes. But now air isn`t enough. Life isn`t enough. I`m empty without you. Do you know how pathetic that is? It`s not even fair. Why do I have to love you at all? Why does it have to be like this?"  
  
"Because everyone needs to belong to someone else, whether they like it or not," she said back, surprising me, and sounding as angry as I was. "Whether they even want it or not. I know you`d like to just go back to being the tough fighter who doesn`t need anyone, and that`s all very nice, but that`s not what you`re here for. Nobody can live like that. If that was all you were you would be nothing. Practically dead. Like Vicious."  
  
I realized that that was the difference between me and him. Vicious was dead. He didn`t feel anything, not really. But I felt both love and pain now, and I hadn`t even known that I could. For a small glimmering moment, I understood for once why she cared about me.  
  
We didn`t say much more to eachother. We`d said almost too much already, and were too exhausted to keep talking. Julia went into the bathroom and got dressed in silence, and I just kept looking out the window. I felt like a ghost watching that city, or like someone about to die. It was not my world. This was not my home. I didn`t remember how I had gotten here. Where did I belong?  
  
I didn`t hear her come out again, but I felt her bury her face into my back, and felt her warm breath against my shirt as she whispered, "What do you want me to do?"  
  
I turned around and brought her to me, wrapping my arms tightly around her. Feeling her against my heart again somehow made everything look a little better. "Come again tonight. Here."  
  
"Are you sure?" she asked me.  
  
"Yes. And then you`ll never have to again." She looked up at me questioningly and I explained, "I`m coming up with a plan. I`ll tell you about it then." I kissed her forehead covered with hair and without another word she left, the heels of her boots clicking delicately down the steps.  
  
For the rest of the day, I planned our escape. The more details I formed in my head and the more precise the plan got, the more I was disturbed by it, and the more cigarettes I smoked as I paced nervously around my room watching the sky change outside.  
  
It wasn`t that I didn`t know if she would be willing to go through with it. She was so desperate to get away from Vicious that she would do anything to be able to leave. It was the kind of measures we would be taking that worried me. Getting out would mean erasing ourselves from every place we`d been familiar with in the past few years and everyone who knew our names. Once we got out we would have no connections, no allies, and nowhere to go. But we would have eachother.  
  
Of course, that was what this was all about. We both knew this wasn`t just about Vicious, or even escaping from the dangerous ways of living we`d both gotten ourselves trapped in long ago. Inside, we knew this was the only way for us to be together.  
  
I waited and the hours flew and before I knew it, it was evening. When she came to meet me she always was there about the time it got completely dark. Maybe this time out of caution she would wait until it was dark before leaving, but I knew she would come straight here.  
  
I waited.  
  
And she didn`t come.  
  
For the first hour I could at least tell myself reasons I shouldn`t be worried, even if I really was. After all, a million things could have happened to tie her up for another couple hours. I told myself that. And I waited.  
  
In the time I sat on my bed in the dark, a child could have been born. But it seemed more like time enough for a child to be born, grow up, live through hundreds of heartbreaks and broken arms and new cars, and die somewhere in a hospital. Every second somebody dies somewhere. You cannot possibly imagine the horror of that until you`ve waited that long and discovered how long a minute can be, how long an hour can be, like me in that dark room smoking to distract myself with my back turned hatefully towards the ticking clock.  
  
I smashed my cigarette butt into an ashtray. That was my last one. It had been dark for at least six hours now.  
  
A wave of panging reality swept over me. My mind was screaming torturedly with confusion. I knew, somehow, that she wasn`t coming. It just wasn`t possible. It was too late. I knew something was wrong. I knew she could very easily be in trouble right then. But what could I do?  
  
So I stayed there. That was all there was for me to do.  
  
It must have been at least another hour that went by. Maybe more. I don`t know.  
  
I was standing and staring out the window when I heard footsteps running up the stairs.  
  
I turned quickly just as the door on the opposite side of the room swung open. She was breathing heavily, like she`d run all the way here. We stood looking at eachother for a few seconds. Then I said, "Julia..." I stared in disbelief. She looked so different. Her hair was windblown and tangled and any trace of hope was gone from her eyes. "What is it?"  
  
"I..." She looked like she didn`t know what to say. I noticed she had a bag over her shoulder that was full of something, but I couldn`t tell what. "I`m leaving."  
  
I stared, shaking my head slowly. "No...What do you mean?"  
  
"I`m leaving, tonight. I`m sorry...I can never see you again. I just came to warn you."  
  
"Julia, what are you talking about?"  
  
"I`m sorry, Spike. This was all a lie. It...Vicious needed someone that could get information out of you, someone to get you to trust them and then find out whatever he needed."  
  
I kept shaking my head. "What? You`re not telling me this was..."  
  
"Yes...it was a set-up." She could hardly spit it out. "Listen, I didn`t have any choice in the matter."  
  
"No. No...Vicious wouldn`t have any reason to do that. Julia- "  
  
"I don`t even know what it was about. That wasn`t my business, I was just supposed to go along with it and tell them whatever you told me. And now they know you`re trying to leave. I just came to tell you that."  
  
I kept watching her face. But it was so hard to see if she was pretending.  
  
"Julia, why are you doing this? What happened? Please..." I came closer to her, but then stepped back in surprise when she yanked a gun out of her bag and pointed it at me.  
  
"No! Don`t do this!" she begged. "Don`t touch me! I`m sorry, I know I never should have lied to you....but it was me or you, and I have to stay alive. No, I never loved you, but it`s not like I wanted you dead. Please, I hope you can understand. I just don`t want you in trouble now because of me..."  
  
She was shaking like the way glass trembles at the sound of a high-pitched note, wanting to shatter into hundreds of pieces. That was how close she was to breaking out into tears. I could see it. But at the same time, she looked like such a different person, holding a gun at me, telling me these things that were all living nightmares that wouldn`t register in my head. Her words came out strong, but she looked about to cave in. She couldn`t mean what she was saying...could she?  
  
"Julia," I said quietly. "...Stop it."  
  
I saw a flash of deep sadness flicker in her rainy, washed blue eyes, and then her head just sunk and she looked down at the floor, keeping the gun pointed straight at me. She held that gun steady out of pure fear. But it was not fear of me. She was afraid that I would see through her. She was lying.  
  
"Julia. Don`t be afraid. We still have options. We`re in control of our lives." I paused, watching her. She didn`t refute my words. "Don`t let Vicious make you think otherwise. He`s only in control if you let him be. But he doesn`t matter." I kept my expression strong to make her believe me, and said it again. "Julia, he doesn`t matter."  
  
Her strength failed then. Seeing the tears well up in her eyes scalded my heart as if they were each hot water burning me, and merely seeing her like that made me want to crush Vicious`s skull.  
  
She dropped the gun. Her hand holding it had started shaking so much she may not even have dropped it on purpose. Then her eyes raised to rest on me, and she slowly walked forward, wiping her tears.  
  
Then she kissed me. It was like being slowly and painfully stabbed. I felt everything that she felt, in that last moment that I held her. She was a part of me, and right then I couldn`t even begin to comprehend why that wasn`t enough to save us. Right then I was just a child again, needing to be inside her, to be kept.  
  
When she broke away, stepping backwards, I almost collapsed as if I`d been punched. She breathed in and out heavingly, the tears now coming uncontrollably. He had frightened her and manipulated her until her whole exterior fell away, dropping in pieces of armor. I wanted to touch her, to beg her. Tell her it didn`t have to end like this, we could still survive.  
  
She just looked up at me and whispered with a cracked voice, "Get away."  
  
Then she was gone.  
  
A cool wind blew in through the window. The first cold air of autumn. I shut the window and then the breeze was stifled, the soft club music killed. I just sat there in the scarred little room, in the darkness, in the silence.  
  
This was what loving had made me.  
  
It wasn`t going to take a few years for me to look back and start regretting things. I did right there in that room, with the scent of her still fresh in my memory. Some gold strands of her hair left in my bed. I couldn`t believe that I had told her I never would have chosen a fate with her. What I wouldn`t have given then just to have that fate - that life. It was just as I had said. I was empty without her.  
  
How pathetic.  
  
I wanted to kill Vicious then. Or maybe I just wanted him to kill me. All I knew was that wherever I ran away to in the galaxy, it would still be too close to him. There was not enough room in the universe for us both to go on still living, to co-exist in any sense.  
  
And then in the end, I heard her voice, and it nearly soothed my anger. She had told me to get away. Run away. I don`t know how Vicious had found out about Julia and me, but all it would have taken is a syndicate member to walk by my window and see us. Maybe he had found out that day. Or maybe he had already known when I came to see him that morning. But somehow he had gotten to Julia, most likely threatened her somehow, and delayed her in meeting me. And she`d still come, risking her life, to get to me and somehow warn me. She`d risked her life to say goodbye.  
  
I went to the bridge that night and fell asleep there. With the syndicate now my enemy it was dangerous to stay home, or stay almost anywhere. But not here. This place was concealed, hidden. It was neither in the present or in the past. Those without love in their hearts walked past it unseeing. There was no way they could find me as long as I was there.  
  
The next day I died.  
  
Everyone knew the only way to get out of the Red Dragon was to die. So I planned my own death, faked my death, just as I would have for both me and Julia if things had gone the right way. I knew from the beginning I wouldn`t be fooling Vicious. It would have worked before, but now that he was out to get me it was too obvious. But that didn`t matter. I would return to him still. Some day. I was just buying myself time.  
  
In my head I didn`t think of it as moving on. I just left aside my emotions to be rested for a while. Someday I would face Vicious again. But now I had to do what Julia had wanted me to.  
  
As time went by, I started to recollect an identity, acquire some new familiar faces, even if I didn`t call all of them my friends. I became a bounty hunter because it is an identity neither dignified or undignified, and I didn`t think I could handle being either with what I know felt inside.  
  
I wanted to forget that love could do this to a person, and especially a person like me. Nothing should be able to do that, and not something as miniscule as love. Imagine. Love, a little girl`s dream, a medium for songs and poetry, a thing believed by some to be only in the wishful thinker`s imagination. Yet with a stupid and childish grin it had gotten the best of Spike Spiegel and run off laughing...Or had it been the worst of me that it got?  
  
I would tell myself that I didn`t need her, but then only hear her saying those words I would never be able to forget. "Everybody needs to belong to someone, whether they like it or not." I would try to get the words out of my head but then her voice would wince like a broken record, playing the words over and over again in my mind.  
  
Every time I thought of her, I lit a cigarette. It got to the point where I did it to forget, to distract myself and think of something else, until cigarette by cigarette, I was burning my past away. I was burning her away.  
  
And now, today, I am numb to the world. I track down criminals to earn a living but I don`t believe in justice. I get injured but I don`t feel pain. I`ll be about to be killed but I won`t be afraid. I don`t care what happens anymore, and at the same time I`m miserable, restless. And it`s because I know Vicious is still out there. It is some awkward combination of my attachment to him as an old friend and the deep hatred we both share for eachother now that draws me to him. I know I`ll kill him someday. Sometimes, though, I fear that even doing that will bring no relief and I will be exactly the same.  
  
I think these thoughts avoiding the real truth. After all, Julia is still out there, too. A thorn in my heart still stinging. Maybe it`s our fate to be together, or maybe fate doesn`t give a damn what happens to people like me. But she`s out there somewhere out of my reach, and it seems like it should be so easy to find where. But I will probably never see her again. I know this and at the same time I know the only way I can ever be relieved is by finding her again.  
  
So with some kind of third eye, maybe, or with my instinct, or my heart, I search for her. Humans have colonized across space and advanced to a self-corruptive level beyond imagination. And yet I`m human, and I`m still nothing but an animal driven by instinct, driven by what I need. One side of my head searches and the other side knows that the object will never be found. I can only wonder which side of my head will keep me alive longer.  
  
No one around me knows what happened to me, and because of that I will always be alone. The only two people who know the story are out there, one probably hunting me, and the other gone from me. I guess we are a restless triangle, always pulling ends, taunted by eachother`s existence. We were always a triangle in one way or another. It`s frightening how things can change.  
  
Maybe I will be pushing memories out of my head for the rest of my life. Maybe I will never wake up and be relieved from this endless dream. Maybe I will keep wishing away my past until I have wished myself away.  
  
But secretly I know I will never stop looking for her. 


End file.
